The century contest over slavery in the United States made that factor so prominent in national history that it overshadows matters of equal importance in many transactions. The anti-slavery provision of the Ordinance of 1787 has been extravagantly praised ever since the oratory of Daniel Webster first called general attention to it. Sectional partisans have exhausted logic in trying to trace the authorship to Jefferson, a Southern man, or to Dane, a Northern man. The North has credited it to the persistence of New England; the South, pointing to the five Southern affirmative votes out of the eight, has attributed it to the indulgence of their section. In recognising this first anti-slavery action of the National Government, Northern orators have overlooked an attendant clause, the first national fugitive slave law. It paved the way for a similar provision in the Constitution and led to the obnoxious slave rendition laws of later years. In praising the indulgence of the South, the eulogists of that section have failed to consider the price the New England Associators paid in this first slavery compromise of the nation. When the blinding passion of the slavery question is eliminated from a consideration of this ordinance some other beneficent provisions, added through the desire to satisfy the New England purchasers, begin to appear. They are taken largely from the "bill of rights" placed in the first constitution of the State of Virginia by George Mason, and copied in many of the later constitutions, including that of the United States. They seek to guarantee the rights of the individual against the encroachments of the Government; to embody the principles which the English barons secured at Runnymede; to secure the inheritances left to the English-speaking people by Hampden and Pym. Although many of the early State Constitutions contained a guarantee of religious freedom, _habeas corpus_, trial by jury, rights to property, and regard for contracts, as has just been stated, these principles had not been expressed in the Articles of Confederation and the General Government was not bound in any manner to grant them in the western territory. But their incorporation in the ordinance gave assurance that their benefits were not to be confined to the original States.